This blogpost by Lucy Cassidy is part of the ISJ series on co-production (autumn-winter 2025). Different post-graduate researchers and academics affiliated to the ISJ share their thoughts about doing co-production as part of their research. The blogs follow a question-answer format.
Image by Matt Seymour | Unsplash |
What drew you to doing and researching co-production?
Photo by Lucy Cassidy. Science Lab Youth Theatre Sharing |
My practice of co-creating theatre with children began and was grown through running weekly youth theatre sessions. As a practising artist making experimental theatre, I brought the idea of openness and experimentation to our sessions. This approach launched us into a co-creative space where my role was to provide the frame of what we’d make, and the children determined what happened within it.
I found myself continuously surprised by what we made together and began merging my youth theatre and professional practice by inviting children from my youth theatres to collaborate in my professional performances. This resulted in the formation of my company Aurora that specialises in making theatre with children and their adults, both in process and in the finished theatrical experience itself.
Photo by Lucy Cassidy. School Without Walls, Class Teacher creating their own reflective journal |
What was your first experience of co-productive research and what did you learn from it?
Despite regularly using the term ‘research and development’ to describe the first phase of my professional theatre making process, I did not conceive of my work as ‘proper research’ until I took part in School without Walls, a radical education project that asked, how can we do school differently? This was an 8-year-long co-research project, so I learned a huge amount.
Notably, I was introduced to reflective journalling processes and reflection meetings and the notion of bringing your whole self to the research. I remember Penny Hay, one of the project directors, beginning each collaboration by asking the team including the class teachers about their ‘outside’ interests and skills. This question invited us to take part in this learning adventure as people, rather than workers. This resulted in a high amount of personal investment and connection to the co-enquiry process.
Photo by Lucy Cassidy. Child’s journal from School Without Walls, capturing the felt experience of the project |
What are the challenges of co-productive research, and how have you approached these?
Some of the challenges of co-productive research I’ve encountered include:
Lost in Translation: when the product does not reflect the process, when things are messy or unpolished or when it looks like nothing has happened because the learning has been inwardly experienced. The challenges here are twofold: firstly, capturing this inner process and secondly translating it into something that can be understood by others.
My learning is that rather than demand a child create in a particular way or to a particular timescale, it is up to us as adults to become the translators. We need to use our artistry to help other adults see through ‘insider’ eyes. For example, if a child’s individual journal looks messy or empty, rather than share the journal as is, we might instead create a group journal of selected pages, to be explored while listening to a soundscape of the session, or a spoken commentary from the child about their felt experience.
Oh, I thought you’d be doing a fairy tale. Another challenge I’ve experienced is when children’s desires for the co-production don’t match their parents/carers expectations. I remember children taking part in a summer school and really wanting to tell scary stories, based on times when they had been frightened.
This was confronting for parents/carers who were hoping for a fairy-tale-in-a-week type performance. On reflection, I think that the context for co-production needs to be held very carefully. The reality is we cannot guarantee a co-production experience will just be fun, it might also be serious and important and require talking about in a suitable environment.
But we need some blurb, a title and an image, now! Sometimes the long period of uncertainness in a co-creative process, where the artists don’t yet know the shape of the outcome, can be challenging. I remember being replaced as the director of a co-created young people’s performance, when the adult producers felt uncomfortable not knowing the story of the performance we were making.
A reflection here is that sharing what a co-creative process looks like and how long it takes is important. It gives clarity, and some reassurance in that it tells producers when we will know, even if we don’t currently. These days, I try and ‘buy’ us co-creators as much uncertain time as possible by investing in a pre-research and development period to allow for the emergence of the shape, well before title and blurb are demanded.
Photo by Borough Road Nursery. Child explores the installation they’ve co-created |
What does co-productive research allow you to do that other methods don’t? Can you illustrate this with an example?
Co-productive research has allowed me to understand and create from a place beyond words. It has allowed me to relate to my co-researchers in a more embodied, felt, whole-person-to-whole-person way.
Co-research feels different. It often gives me a distinct sense of being immersed or more colloquially ‘in it’. Being in a co-research session can feel like the creative, transcendental state that Csikzentmihalyi names ‘flow’. The challenge of this is it can be hard to remember what has happened or been discovered. However, the plus side is that it can generate knowledge from the very heart of the practice.
Photo by Lucy Cassidy. Staying alongside the child as advocated by Carlina Rinaldi (2006) |
What one writer or concept has been most influential on your approach to co-production?
Since beginning my co-research journey, I’ve been inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach to early years education. The Reggio Emilia Approach places adult ‘atelieristas’ alongside young children on a learning journey, prioritising the 100 languages of the child and their learning in relationship with other people and the environment.
The Reggio Emilia philosophy sees all learning as co-produced. I’ve recently been re-reading some of Carlina Rinaldi’s writings (originally talks) about the 50 years plus Reggio Approach, which illuminate the practice.
Photo by Lucy Cassidy. Child writes on their knee during a School Without Walls session |
Has being involved in co-production project changed the ways you think about research? Or think about the world?
When I think of the value of co-researching with children, I often think of an occurrence that happened year-on-year during the School Without Walls project. Parents, carers and educators joining us for the celebration day, would make comments like, “I can’t believe how much their handwriting has improved” or “they’ve never written as much as this in the classroom”.
Despite eschewing handwriting practice and replacing tables and chairs with cushions, the floor or a grassy park, children’s writing improved impressively. In my opinion the children wrote so much because they had something important to say. They wrote neatly, because they wanted others to understand their ideas. This experience solidified my appreciation of co-research, as being a rich educational approach, that can give children a sense self-determination whilst motivating them/us adults to develop key skills.
My experience of co-creation has allowed me to loosen my hands on the reins of the projects I’m involved in. These days, I see my role as an artist as to create the conditions and environments (physical and emotional) that support this unfurling of group creativity. This involves stepping back, giving space to and trusting the co-creative process, regardless of the tangles and messiness.
If you’d like to read more visit Lucy Cassidy’s website https://lucycassidy.co,uk
